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Is Quickbooks Online safe?

Given the rising surge in hacking attacks from Anonymous, Lulzsec, as well as attacks from Russia and China, is a cloud-based service like QuickBooks Online or Mint safe to use for a company’s finances? We’ve always kept our books on local servers because the first rule of security is _physical_ security. Once we move our financials to a cloud service, even a privatized cloud, aren’t we trading a great deal of safety and privacy in return for convenience and lower service costs?

It's interesting to see that three identical answers were given by as many respondents. In addition, the answers do not address the main issue, external threats. Are these recommended, canned responses from Intuit?

The fact is that security is only as good as the cloud services provider makes it. Recent attacks have proven that current defenses are not adequate and that caution must be exercised when exposing critical data by use of cloud services. Also, given the pace of system releases and the evolving sophistication of hackers, the argument "we've never had..." is useless.

Recently, the availability of technology developed by the government was announced. To my knowledge, no major company has announced that it would take advantage of this opportunity to fortress their online security. Perhaps it's because implementation of strong security would impact profits more predictably than the perceived threat.

Actually, as expensive as it is for a company to weather a hack attack, it's their clients that suffer the brunt of it. Once can easily imagine a business meeting where it's decided to take a wait and see approach, particularly because of this cost ratio.

Until there is a "certifiable" way to assess the quality of security measures, and to compare services offered in the degree of safety provided, I run a small business and I will not use online accounting services because of the risk of exposing bank accounts, employees confidential information and company data.

Large companies can afford to recover from a hacking incident. A small business would be crushed by it.

It's interesting to see that three identical answers were given by as many respondents. In addition, the answers do not address the main issue, external threats. Are these recommended, canned responses from Intuit?

The fact is that security is only as good as the cloud services provider makes it. Recent attacks have proven that current defenses are not adequate and that caution must be exercised when exposing critical data by use of cloud services. Also, given the pace of system releases and the evolving sophistication of hackers, the argument "we've never had..." is useless.

Recently, the availability of technology developed by the government was announced. To my knowledge, no major company has announced that it would take advantage of this opportunity to fortress their online security. Perhaps it's because implementation of strong security would impact profits more predictably than the perceived threat.

Actually, as expensive as it is for a company to weather a hack attack, it's their clients that suffer the brunt of it. Once can easily imagine a business meeting where it's decided to take a wait and see approach, particularly because of this cost ratio.

Until there is a "certifiable" way to assess the quality of security measures, and to compare services offered in the degree of safety provided, I run a small business and I will not use online accounting services because of the risk of exposing bank accounts, employees confidential information and company data.

Large companies can afford to recover from a hacking incident. A small business would be crushed by it.

First, all of our data is stored on "mirrored" disks. Each time you add or edit your data, it is written to two hard drives, so that if one fails you will never notice as a user. Second, we periodically copy all data to a third hard drive in order to protect against any problems that might affect the first two.Lastly, we perform backups to tape each night. These tapes are periodically moved offsite to a secure location. The security of your data is our number-one goal, and we've put a great deal of thought and resources to ensure that we have a completely reliable system.Of course, first and foremost, we have designed our application and our server architecture to help make sure we never need any of these backups.

First, all of our data is stored on "mirrored" disks. Each time you add or edit your data, it is written to two hard drives, so that if one fails you will never notice as a user.

Second, we periodically copy all data to a third hard drive in order to protect against any problems that might affect the first two.

Lastly, we perform backups to tape each night. These tapes are periodically moved offsite to a secure location. The security of your data is our number-one goal, and we've put a great deal of thought and resources to ensure that we have a completely reliable system.

Well if the machines you use to run Quicken locally are connected to the Internet, you still run the risk of that data being accessed by unsavory people. I suppose if you disconnected the machines completely then you might have a higher degree of safety.

It’s not just passwords and going after your money, in many cases these hackers are going after the lists of who you know, in order to exact a scam at some time in the future. While it might not seem a threat at first, it is important to recognize that companies often need to keep their vendor list and customer list close to the vest. I’m not sure I would feel safe running my business from a public cloud; the SLA should demonstrate the cloud hosting vendor’s commitment to rectifying issues should there be a security breach.